Management Review

Management Review ›› 2025, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (1): 114-126.

• Innovation and Entrepreneurship Management • Previous Articles    

Do “Selfish” Managers Inhibit Corporate Low-carbon Technology Innovation? A Binary Study Based on Explicit and Implicit Self-interested Behavior

Li Nanbo1, Sun Hongyuan2, Li Shu1, Sun Yongmei3   

  1. 1. School of Economics and Management, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun 130021;
    2. College of Environment and Energy, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen 518071;
    3. School of Economics, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872
  • Received:2023-02-22 Published:2025-01-18

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Abstract: Enterprises are the main body of low-carbon technology innovation. Balancing the personal interests of enterprise managers with low-carbon technology innovation can effectively improve the level of low-carbon technology innovation in enterprises and help achieve the “dual carbon” goals. This paper takes high carbon emission enterprises listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share exchanges from 2012 to 2022 as samples, examines the impact of explicit and implicit binary self-interest behavior of managers on low-carbon technology innovation, explores the differential effects of different ownership properties and enterprise lifecycles, and characterizes the explicit and implicit binary mechanism of how manager self-interest behavior affects low-carbon technology innovation. The research results show that both explicit and implicit self-interest behaviors of managers can inhibit low-carbon technological innovation in enterprises, and this inhibitory effect has a lag effect; Both explicit and implicit self-interest behaviors of non-state-owned enterprise managers inhibit low-carbon technological innovation, while low-carbon technological innovation in state-owned enterprises is only influenced by implicit self-interest behaviors of managers; Implicit self-interest behavior has a suppressive effect on enterprises at any stage of their lifecycle, while explicit self-interest behavior suppresses low-carbon technological innovation when the enterprise is in its mature and declining stages; Mechanism analysis shows that financialization plays a non-linear mediating role in the process of explicit self-interest behavior inhibiting low-carbon technological innovation, while implicit self-interest behavior exacerbates agency conflicts and hinders low-carbon attention from turning to inhibiting low-carbon technological innovation. The research conclusion provides policy reference and empirical evidence to alleviate the inhibitory effect of managers’ self-interest behavior on low-carbon technological innovation in enterprises, and has important strategic significance for ensuring high-quality economic development and national industrial security.

Key words: manager’s self-interested behavior, low carbon technology innovation, financialization, agency conflicts, low carbon attention transfer